The chasm is still too wide between noble Swiss ideas and the hard reality of locations where war is hell

WALK the calm, well-heeled streets of Geneva and there seems little to connect this metropolis in neutral Switzerland with the genocidal slaughter in Rwanda and the rape camps of Bosnia in the 1990s, or the appalling violence lately inflicted on civilians caught up in fighting in Darfur, Chad or eastern Congo. Yet decisions taken in Geneva do have an effect, both legal and humanitarian, on people in benighted places—and the world would be much happier if the effect was far greater.

The city is the UN's humanitarian hub, headquarters to both its refugee and human-rights agencies. More memorably, though, it lends its name to a clutch of conventions, adopted six decades ago this month, initially with the horrors of two world wars in mind. Those agreements still form a bedrock for the laws of war and the protection of non-combatants.

Yet in a year that has already seen bitter fighting in Gaza and Sri Lanka, and a still mounting civilian toll in an eight-year-old battle against the Taliban in Afghanistan, some inevitably question whether the Geneva conventions and their later protocols are really suited to today's conflicts. The number of wars between states, where regular, uniformed armies square off against each other, has fallen sharply. This century it has mostly been conflicts within countries that have claimed headlines, with insurgents and rebels, sometimes with foreign backing, battling each other as well as their own government.

Do the old rules really apply in such conflicts? And if they still do, how can they be enforced more effectively, since all the evidence suggests they are not only not honoured but dishonoured in the breach? Can they be stretched to cover new threats, such as international terrorism and piracy?

To the chagrin of those who would banish war itself, neither the four Geneva conventions of 1949—covering the treatment of the wounded on land and at sea, of prisoners-of-war and of civilians caught up in conflict—nor the couple of extra protocols added in 1977, spelling out in more detail the protection afforded to civilians, seek to outlaw conflict (see table below). Nor do they presume (although they do more for the innocent than the earlier Hague conventions, which concentrated chiefly on outlawing some weapons of warfare) that civilians in a war zone always can be or even should be spared.

Their aim is more modest. It was spelled out under prodding from the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), itself set up by a Swiss businessman appalled at the carnage of the Battle of Solferino in 1859, a European punch-up between forces from Austria, France and Italy. The idea is to inject some basic humanity into the conduct of all sides in a conflict.

Indeed, the ICRC points out that “common article 3” of the 1949 conventions requires the humane treatment of any person in enemy hands; then and even earlier, it was clear that such an obligation applied to parties to wars fought within a country's borders, not just across them. The second of the two 1977 protocols, meanwhile, applies specifically to non-international conflicts and cements and extends such obligations in treaty law.

So if the rules are clear, why can't civilians find better protection in conflict zones? One problem is that, although the four 1949 conventions have been signed by all countries, support for the tougher 1977 ones still lags. Among the missing in action are both India and Pakistan, who not only square off against each other from time to time but also face violent insurgencies inside their borders. Other absentees include Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, Malaysia, Myanmar—and the United States. Others, it has to be said, have signed and yet blatantly ignore the rules.

How can such countries and individuals be brought to book? Upholding the rules is bound to be hardest where people simply do not know about the sorts of protection that the conventions and protocols are supposed to afford. A survey commissioned by the ICRC to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the 1949 conventions found that knowledge of them was patchy, even in places that had recently seen conflict. Nearly 60% of those asked had not heard of the accords. Of those who had, 44% thought they did little or nothing to limit the suffering of civilians in war zones.

The ICRC works hard both to disseminate information about the conventions and to get governments and others to teach the rules to their armed forces. When conflicts erupt, it seeks to get all parties to commit to observing the rules by way of special agreements. It has also drawn up more detailed guidelines, though these are only advisory, to help military commanders distinguish more clearly between who is a civilian, and therefore to be protected where possible, and who is not and thus potentially a legitimate target. Yet, as even some of the best-willed practitioners point out, getting from principle to practice will always be hard: each situation is different and even the most carefully written rules will seldom be an exact fit.

When impunity persists

In any case, better than new rules would be more effective enforcement of those that already exist. For a while, after the horrors of the 1990s in Europe and Africa, there was hope that ending impunity for the worst offenders might curb the worst excesses in conflicts. Yet here the prospects seem again to be turning bleak.

Take the issue of rape and other sexual violence in wartime. Although implicitly covered by earlier prohibitions on inhumane treatment, the 1977 Geneva protocols explicitly outlawed rape as a weapon of war. Building on all this, the international tribunal for Rwanda, set up to bring the perpetrators of genocide to justice, was the first to prosecute wide-scale sexual violence as attempted genocide. A UN-backed tribunal for former Yugoslavia took harrowing testimony from Bosnia's many victims and convicted some of their tormentors. The court for Sierra Leone extended the arm of law to cover forced marriage, a feature of other conflicts too, whereby young women are given as “wives” to rebel fighters. Likewise the International Criminal Court (ICC), the world's first permanent war-crimes court, established at The Hague in 2002, included sexual violence in its early indictments.

Yet the prospect of being held to account has so far proved less of a deterrent than was hoped. If anything the use of rape as a weapon of war is on the increase.

Bosnia, where treaties didn't helpAP

Although Islam condemns rape, it has been used by Arab janjaweed militias against black fellow Muslims in Sudan's Darfur region on a scale that has been likened to genocide. The UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, recently said he was “haunted” by the scale and depravity of sexual violence in places like Congo, committed by both rebel and government forces. Some 16,000 new cases of sexual violence, 65% of them involving children, were registered in Congo in 2008, said Susan Rice, America's UN ambassador, quoting figures from the UN Population Fund in a recent Security Council debate. Experience in the field suggests that, as a rule of thumb in these conflict zones, the number of actual cases is probably ten to 20 times greater than the number reported.

In a report to the council this month, Mr Ban's list of conflicts where rape has been widespread ran from Chad and the Central African Republic to Afghanistan under the Taliban, Myanmar and Nepal. But it is not just the numbers that are depressing.

Some of the countries that signed up to the ICC appear to be experiencing buyers' remorse. The African Union (AU) was the first regional organisation to talk of moving from non-interference (the claim that governments can do what they like within their own borders) to non-indifference to such crimes. African governments make up about a third of those that have ratified the ICC's Rome statutes, which oblige them to help the court track down those it has charged. Yet a recent AU summit voted to end co-operation with the court over its indictment of Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur (a charge of genocide was dropped until ICC pre-trial judges can be sure the evidence warrants it).

The AU vote has been deplored by a number of African governments and by a long list of African human-rights groups. Critics of the court argue it is biased: all four cases it has taken on so far are from Africa. But of the four, three were referred by the governments themselves (Uganda, Chad and the Central African Republic), and the fourth, Sudan, was referred by the Security Council.

The backlash against the court is unlikely to help the battle to end impunity. Nor will the antics of the 47-member UN Human Rights Council (an inter-governmental body also based in Geneva that is nonetheless separate from the office headed by the UN's commissioner for human rights). Earlier this year a majority on the council gave Sri Lanka a pat on the back despite appalling loss of life among civilians caught up in the defeat of the Tamil Tigers. Not long before, it had lambasted Israel for its war in Gaza, mandating a fact-finding commission to look into what it said were Israel's “war crimes”, while saying nothing at all about the actions of Hamas. The mission, led by Richard Goldstone, a prominent international lawyer, who reportedly sees his mandate in a less one-sided fashion, is due to report in September.

Meanwhile asking the ICC to take on other international crimes, such as terrorism and piracy, looks a non-starter. There is no agreed definition of terrorism beyond the “we know it when we see it” rule that lets one man's terrorist off the hook as another's freedom-fighter. In any case, the ICC has yet to pin down the fourth crime mentioned in its statute alongside war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide: the crime of “aggression”.

At a review conference next year, some will press for this charge to be added to the court's detailed sheet of punishable crimes. That would be premature. Informal discussions among the signatories to the court and some interested outsiders have produced tentative agreement on a definition of aggression. China and Russia have joined the talks, though they are not signatories. The United States, another non-signer, has held aloof, though the Obama administration could yet decide to take part. Trickiest of all, however, will be to figure out a way for the court to finger an alleged culprit without treading on the prerogatives of the UN Security Council, which is supposed to decide on all matters of war and peace.

Eventually a mechanism may be agreed that involves the council. America, China and Russia are unlikely to join the court until that happens and even then may not. The Geneva conventions are taking a battering, and the victims of war are still getting short shrift. But count on the big powers to hold their own ground.